Using String Methods In Jump Tables

[Tim Daneliuk]

Problem:

  Given tuples in the form (key, string), use 'key' to determine
  what string method to apply to the string:

    key           operation
    -----------------------

     l            lower()
     u            upper()
     t            title()
     ...

Commentary:

   Easy, right?  Well ... except that I would really, really like
   to avoid cascading ifs or eval based solutions.  I'd like to implement
   this as a jump table dictionary:

     jt = { 'l' : lower_function reference,
            'u' : upper_function reference,
             ...
          }

   So I could then do this:

     string = jt[key](string)

But There's A Problem:

   I tried to do this:

     jt = {'l', "".lower,
           'u', "".upper,
           ...
          }

   You can get away with this because all string objects appear to point to common
   method objects.  That is,: id("a".lower) == id("b".lower)

   HOWEVER, you cannot then do this:

     string = jt[key](string)

   Why?  Because the methods of a string, while common to all strings
   *do not accept an arg*.  They are implemented to "know" about the
   string instance they "belong to" (that contains them).

(Forgive me here, I am probably not using some of the OO arcana properly...)

I realize that the string module has many of the same functions that
are found as methods on strings.  But it doesn't have all of them -
the .title() method is notably absent.  If this were not the case,
I could happily do things like 'l' : string.lower  and my approach
would work fine.  

Even if I could use the string module, I'd still be curious though:

   How do you get a reference to a method found in one object instance, but
   actually apply it to another instance of the same class?  I'm guessing this may
   involve fiddling with some of the internal __ variables, but I'm not
   quite sure where to go next.

As I said, I know I could do this as a set of cascading ifs or even as an
eval, but I'm loathe to use such approaches. I like jump tables as a
structural construct because they are easy to understand and maintain. I
also realize that what I'm asking may be violating some deeply held notion
of OO purity, but, well, now I'm just curious if there is a way to do this
...

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tim Daneliuk
tundra at tundraware.com